Travels with houmous ……

Now, I have my old friend Lois to thank for setting me off on a journey with houmous. 

Houmous, 2026

It is of course one of those foods which is served up as a starter or one of several dishes often eaten cold.

And today, she wrote about her first encounter with this dip from the Levant in her blog.*

My Wikipedia tells me that houmous is a dip,  made from cooked mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. The standard garnish includes olive oil, a few whole chickpeas, parsley, and paprika”.**

And for those unfamiliar with the Levant it’s that area at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and includes Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Cyprus, Hatay Province, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Libya and Turkey.***

That said purists would limit the definition to just the first eight countries.

I grew up with the Levant, mainly through old historical maps and from the books of Eric Ambler who described the area where spies, and police chiefs mingle with petty criminals, drug dealers and dodgy bankers, set against a backdrop of seedy and romantic places between the two world wars. People die in nasty ways; no one can be trusted and always the agents of foreign powers lurk in the shadows. 

Ten minites out from the Pireaus, bound for the Levant, 1982

My favourite of the books is the "Mask of Dimitrios" written in 1939 which pretty much begins with the discovery of a body fished out of the sea and identified in an Istanbul morgue as that of a notorious criminal and by degree takes the investigator to Smyrna, and on to the Piraeus, Sofia and eventually Paris. 

Along the way he encounters more murders, the trafficking of women, a smuggling gang, a stash of heroin, a bit of blackmailing and an Italian spy. 

Nor is this all because the dead criminal faked his own death and our investigator is at various times, betrayed, framed and imprisoned. 

In the Levant, 1982

For a sixteen year old this was a world far removed from southeast London and introduced me to a mysterious but shabby place and time, which I would not begin to visit for another twenty years.

By which time like Lois I had been introduced to houmous and a whole mix of food from the Mediterranean and in the process fell in love with both olives, and olive oil and that way of eating which was all about long slow evenings with heaps of food, fine wine, and good company.

None of which is unique to me, but I suppose marked out that journey from uninviting salads and over cooked vegetables and many a mundane meal to different and exciting dishes.

Gigantes plaki 2003

But then each generation discovers their food of choice. For my parents, grand parents and great grandparents it will have been new products sourced from Britain’s empire, made possible by advances in food preservation and cheap foreign labour and enhanced for those in the armed forces who were taken to the far corners of the globe while acquiring and controlling those imperial possessions and fighting the wars of the last century.

And now the invitation to different foods comes via supermarkets, sleek media presentations and the constant desire to discover new things to eat and impress friends.

To my embarrassment I can confess that some of my introductions to new things to eat have indeed come via the supermarket and the telly, but more have been  while on holiday or in the case of humous from a chance conversation with Lois many decades ago. 

Location; The Levant

Food from the Levant, 2023

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1982-2023

*My go-to hummus; https://loiselsden.com/2026/06/10/my-go-to-hummus/

**Levantine cuisine, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levantine_cuisine

*** The Levant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 95 Chadwick Street ...and Mrs. Matilda Lovitt

This was Chadwick Street in 2021.

It is off Fairfield Street and faces out on to Piccadilly Railway Station.

Wyre Street, 2021

Despite being a popular place to park up and wait for someone arriving off a train, you won’t find it on any maps, and it ends pretty much soon after it starts.

Today it is called Wyre Street and dribbles out as a footpath before connecting with Travis Street.

To the casual visitor it has nothing much to commend itself, lacking any buildings bar a brick wall, the railway viaduct that cuts across it and heaps of grass.

Nor was it ever thought worthy of an entry into the directories, although back in 1850 the Stag and Pheasant was recorded in the trades section of Slater’s Directory.  The pub served the 22 houses, and surrounding streets and some closed courts, which will have provided a lot of potential customers.

Despite there being no reference to the street in the directories, I know that some of the 22 homes were back to back properties, and Chadwick Street gave access to a number of closed courts with even more small and mean houses.

Chadwick Street, 1851

We also have the names of the residents who lived there in 1851, and equally important the occupations they were engaged in.  These ranged from skilled and unskilled jobs to a clerk, the inevitable charwoman, as well as those making a living from the streets including a milk seller.

The largest group were connected to the textile trade, covering all the main areas of work and interestingly one who described himself as a handloom weaver.  This was Elias Johnson from Stretford which had been a centre for handloom weaving. 

But as he was 62 I suspect he was describing the occupation of his youth given that by 1851 machines had all but squeezed out most handloom weaving.

Just how many of these visited the Stag and Pheasant is lost, but its landlady a Mrs. Matilda Lovitt ran the place from at least 1848 and into the early years of the next decade.  The Rate Books record it separately as a Public House and also a Beer House, with the pub rated at £40 a year and the beer house at £12.

By contrast the neighbouring houses were rated at between £12 a year down to £2 suggesting that her business was indeed profitable.

We know that she was born in 1808, married her first husband in 1829, and her second in 1856, and was widowed twice.  By the age of 30 in 1841 she had three children and that two of them were still living with her at Chadwick Street in 1851.

Her second husband was also a publican who was the landlord of the Railway Inn at 221 Deansgate.  

He is listed there from at least 1850 through to 1856, but by 1863 has gone.  By which time the Stag and Peasant also does not appear on the records. 

Wyre Street, 2021

And a full thirty years later  Chadwick Street has become Worsley Street, and the Directories record only a clutch of industrial units with one beer shop, leaving yet another name change from Worsley Street to Wyre Street  sometime by 1915.

I doubt we have finished with the street, and in the fullness of time it would be fun to return to track the residents in 1851, leaving me just to add that in 1881 the former Mrs. Levitt recorded as living with one of her children in Preston at the grand old age of 71.

Location; Manchester, 

Pictures; Chadwick Street, 1851, from Adshead's map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Chadwick Street, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

That food factory ……. the River ……. and a conversation

Just when I spent my dinner times gazing out over the River talking about music, the chance of over time and pretty much everything is lost.

I think it will be the summer of 1970 and the location was Glenville’s the food factory down by the Blackwall Tunnel.

It could have been the year before or the year after.

Glenville’s made a variety of things from custard powder, and sachets of flavoured water you left in the freezer, to their specialty which was turning powdered milk into granules.

Of all the jobs this was the most unpleasant given that I was tasked with filling large bags of the milk granules as they shot out of a pipe.

It didn’t help that the regulating tap didn’t work very well so you used your hand to stem the flow just long enough to get a bag underneath, and that it came out very hot from being blown through a set of stainless-steel tubes.

Added to which the sweet-smelling stuff stuck to your overalls and worse still your face which on very hot days was prone to mix with your perspiration to form rivulets of milky sweat.

Nor was that all because while we were paid a basic wage there was a bonus for the amount that was produced, and there was the flaw, because on wet and damp days the granulated milk clogged the tubes and production ceased.

At other times I worked in the dispatch area on the ground floor at the end of a long conveyor belt which disappeared into the roof and on to another few floors.

Loading the boxes of assorted “stuff” was never the problem only that they came down at a ferocious pace, and if not unloaded quickly enough would cause a long jam, which the pressure of more from on high meant that sometimes the boxes burst open showering us in clouds of custard or blancmange powder.

All of which meant that breaks and dinner times took on a special place in the day.

And it will have been on one of those that I met up with a South African.

He was the first South African I had met, and I was fascinated by him.  He was a few years older than me, and he had already traveled thousands of miles across two continents, while I had just got the bus from Eltham.

Over half a century later I can’t remember what we talked about other than that song America by Simon and Garfunkel, which chronicles the journey across the US by two young lovers.

We shared the magic of their journey and each of us in our different ways conjured the trip from Saginaw, in Michigan via Pittsburgh to New Jersey.

And now all those years later I have no idea what he looked like or our other companions, and our dinner time conversations are lost.

But listening to America brings back my time in Glenville’s from the smell of the various products being made, along with that of the River to that carefree and optimistic take on life which at 20 I shared with Kathy and her lover.

I still have that optimistic take but long ago lost Glenville's, and despite frequent visits to the area its exact location remains elusive.

So I await a photo, an address or a memory from someone who like me passed a batch of his early 20s at the food factory by the River.

Location; Glenville’s, Greenwich

Pictures; by the River, 1970s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Lost Images of Whalley Range number 9 ....... the wedding reception at the Whalley Hotel

Now I couldn’t resist using this receipt for the wedding reception of Mr and Mars Sherratt which was posted recently on facebook by their daughter who has given me permission to reproduce it.

It is dated 1953 and is one of those wonderful little bits of history which are so often lost.

And reminds me of an earlier story about the Whalley Hotel from almost the same period.

Just two years earlier the Manchester City News carried the story of “Wally of the Whalley Says Goodbye.”

Mr Wally Summer and his wife Ethel had run the pub for four years and were leaving Manchester for Anglesey, where they were to take over the Anglesey Arms.

“It's going to be a wrench leaving” he told the City News, “we’ve made hundreds of friends since we came to Brooks’ Bar.  I’ve been amazed at the number of people who have come up to wish us luck.”*

The Anglesey Arms is still there just at the edge of the Menai Bridge.

But sadly the Whalley has closed its doors for good so the receipt and the story are a little of its history.

With a bit of digging I may be able to discover if Mr Bowden had succeeded Mr Summers but that is for another time.

Picture; from the collection of Jayne Sherratt Bailey

*Manchester City News November 16, 1951

Walking Withington’s past …… the new history book

For anyone who lives in Withington, has lived in Withington or is just curious about the place the latest publication from the local Civic Society is essential reading.

Entitled “Withington Village A History walk in south Manchester” by David Rydeheard is an expanded and updated story of the village based on an earlier book from 2014, which in turn was based a series of historical notes compiled by Louise Kane who was an official tour guide for Manchester City Council.

Now I have that earlier “Walk through the history of Withington”. 

It ran to 33 pages and is a fascinating mine of information which is more invaluable because it can be used to walk around the old township.

David’s new edition follows the same format, has grown to 54 pages and reflects the changes to the area over the last 25 years and acknowledges not only Louise Kane but the Withington historians Kenneth Whittaker and Roger Smith.

And like all good history books it contains extensive footnotes, references and further reading marking it out as a serious and scholarly contribution to our understanding of Withington’s past.

That said it is also a history tour allowing you “to start the tour at any place in Withington village [but] starts at Withington Green at the junction of Cotton Lane”.

And it has something for everyone from accounts of buildings, roads, and people to an entry on “Withington walls” featuring some of “the more than 100 artworks that you can see when walking around Withington village and the product of Withington Walls, a pioneering community arts project”. 

As such it is a fine addition to all those volumes dedicated to local history.

Looking back over the previous century and half these books seem to come in batches.  

In the late 19th century Thomas Ellwood in Chorlton and Mrs. W. C. Williamson  of Fallowfield were amongst a group of historians who wrote histories of their neighbourhoods.  

In part this was motivated by a wish to record the traditions and appearances of small farming communities which were being transformed by urban creep and the decline in agriculture.**

So, Thomas Ellwwod recorded the recollections of the oldest inhabitants of Chorlton-cum-Hardy who in turn drew on the collective memories of parents and grandparents which quickly took the story back to almost the time when the old King George lost the American colonies. 

His articles included accounts of bull baiting on the village green, lost rural traditions like May Songs, the Rush processions, and the Easter enactment of St George and the Dragon with the practice of “lifting” and the sometime intimidating “Riding the Stang”.

In the same vein Mrs. Williamson wrote about the last handloom weavers in Fallowfield, Burnage, and Didsbury in the middle decades of the 19th century.

Fast forward to the 1960s and 70s, and there was another clutch of history books  written for a new audience as the life styles of the early decades of the 20th century vanished under the impact of  changes in transport, consumerism and popular entertainment along with the advance or residential spawl which all but eliminated the last vestiges of the countryside.

In 1970 John Lloyd published his still popular history of Chorlton, a year before Ivor Million wrote his book on Didsbury, Kenneth Whittaker his account of Withington and there were other publications on places like Stretford, and Urmston.

All of which makes David’s book a timely addition in the 21st century to our knowledge which sits with others by Andrew Simpson on Chorlton and Michael Billington on Urmston, Flixton and Daveyhulme and a wealth of electronic descriptions from the internet.

Location; Withington, a suburb of Manchester and a former agricultural township

Pictures; extracts from David’s new book, 2026

* Withington Village A History walk in south Manchester David Rydeheard, 2026, Withington Civic Society, www.withingtoncivicsociety.org.uk 

**Ellwood, Thomas L, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885-1886, South Manchester Gazette,  Williamson, Mrs W.C. Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present, 1888.

Back on Court Yard in 1910

Court Yard in 1910

Now you can never have enough of a good picture so I make no apologies for returning to this one of Court Yard which dates from around 1910 and is from the collection of Kristina Bedford.*

Most of what you see has long past out of living memory.

The Congregational Church away in the distance had been opened in 1868 and was demolished in 1936 and the site was redeveloped by Burton’s where I bought my first suit and later still my first grown up overcoat.

The house next to the church was swept away in 1905, demolished when the southern end of Well Hall Road was cut thereby making the route north towards Well Hall and Shooters Hill a tad quicker and more direct.

But the consequence was that the peace of the church was invaded by the noise of trams, carts and later motor vehicles all of which led to the relocation of the church and in its place the still very impressive building which has now become a McDonald’s.

And on the rare occasions I have ventured in there I still miss the wooden cabinets full of shirts and ties, the racks of ready made jackets  and trousers and the catalogues offering all manner of fashionable made to measure suits.

Still someone will mutter such is progress and I guess that also sums up the developments to the left of our picture, which saw the properties pulled down for the Grove Market.

I wish I could remember these for they would still have been standing when we first came to Eltham but they have passed from my memory and I guess in time I will be hard pressed even to remember the site as it was from the mid 60s until recently.

Annie Morris, early 20th century

So I will fall back on the historical record and stories of that row to our right.

I have written about walking past the properties already.

And it was here that Annie Morris lived when our photographer pitched up on Court Yard.

In her time she had lived at numbers 17 and 25 Court Yard and before that in Ram Alley behind the High Street.

She was born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place, and almost her whole life was spent in here Eltham.

She was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”

Hers is a fascinating story which takes us back to an Eltham that even more than our picture has vanished.

And yes that is a trailer for more rural Eltham stories along with a few more about Annie.

Picture; Court Yard in 1910 courtesy of Kristina Bedford, from Eltham Through Time,  and  of Annie Morris outside her house in Court Yard from the collection of Jean Gammons.

*Eltham Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2013,

What Miss Sarah Kate Sloane did in the Great War ..... part 1

Now, I am only at the beginning of the story of Ms Sloane, who was born in 1871 and died in 1965, but already it promises to be a fascinating piece of research.

British War Medal, 1914-1919

She was born and died in Leicester and spent most of her life there, save for those periods when as a Red Cross nurse she served in hospitals across the country and in France during the Great War.

And it was her wartime medals which drew me into her story, and while I have accumulated some biographical details, I know there is much more.

She was awarded The British War Medal, 1914-18, The Allied Victory Medal, 1914-19, The War Medal Medal, 1939-45, and the Defence Medal, 1939-45, and the first two carry an inscription which includes her name and the letters V.A.D, which refer to her role as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Members of V.A.D. performed a variety of tasks in Red Cross Hospitals, from nursing to cleaning, washing, and cooking, as well as administration and many also took on fund raising activities in the community.

Ms Sloane came from a medical family and both her father and brother were doctors, which makes her choice of nursing and unsurprising one.

Evington House, 2022, formerly Kighton V.A.D., Hospital

The Red Cross records show she served from 1915 through to 1917, at various Red Cross hospitals, starting at the Knighton V.A.D., hospital close to where she lived.

From 1916 she was at No.2 B.R.C. Hospital in Rouen, followed by Frensham Hill Military Hospital,  and Ullesthorpe Court, & Charnwood V.A.D. Hospitals.

After which she worked for the Discharged Soldiers & Sailors organization, which was part of the Ministry of Labour and focused on finding suitable employment for men no longer in the forces.

So far, I have no pictures of Ms Sloane, but I know where she lived in Leicester, and some at least of the houses are still standing today, as is the Knighton V.A.D Hospital which is now known as Evington House and stands in Evington Park.

Evington House, 2022, formerly Kighton V.A.D., Hospital

The house dates from the early 19th century, and bits maybe much older.  In its time it was owned by one family with links to the campaign against the slave trade, and in 1914 was lent by its then owner to the Red Cross.

There are various accounts of the house including its time as a hospital and many also include a fascinating account of the daily routines by Miss Alice Henderson who was the commandment which appeared in the Wyggeston Girls Gazette in 1919.

I suspect much of what Miss Henderson outlined in the article would have been familiar to Sarah Sloane, and was pretty much the lot of many who worked in Red Cross Hospitals.*

And that at present is pretty much all there is.  I know she arrived back from Algiers in 1931, left over £55,000 at her death in 1965 and lived for 30 years at 8 University Road, in Leicester.

Defence Medal, 1939-45

But I don’t have a clue how she voted, what she thought of the big issues of the day or how she occupied her time after war service.

That said I am confident I will find out more.  There are people who have included her in their own family history records, and I await a reply from the Leicester Records Office so there is much more to play for.

All of which leaves me with that odd reflection that history can be messy and can surprise you.

So, when I started the search for the story of Sarah Kate’s medals, I had no idea that she came from Leicester or that our Josh and Polly would turn out to live just minutes away from both Knighton V.A.D., hospital, and her home on University Road.

But then that’s the fun of the past.

Location; Leicester, and elsewhere

Pictures; Miss Sloane’s medal, courtesy of David Harrop and Evington House, formerly Knighton V.A.D., hospital, from the collection of Josh Simpson

Sources; census records, 1901-1921, Red Cross Records, 1914-1919, Baptismal record, 1871, various street directories  and electoral registers, 1920-1930, Probate Records

* Evington’s VAD Hospital, Evington Echo, December 19th, 2014, https://evingtonecho.uk/evingtons-vad-hospital/

& Evington House, Evington Park, https://storyofparksleicester.com/park-histories/evington-park/#:~:text=This%20house%20is%20said%20to,hunter%20gatherers%20roaming%20over%20it.&text=In%20Roman%20times%20and%20on,have%20been%20a%20Roman%20cemetery